The Witcher 2

Anybody playing? I am, and it's sweet. I haven't seen any real impact from importing a TW1 save except I got to keep Aerondight and Raven's Armor though (but they're both scaled down and replaced during the game, rather then ultimate items).

I finished it, and I agree, it's very sweet. I consider it better than Dragon Age 2 in every way possible. It doesn't have party-based combat, but it was implemented better in DA1 anyway. My only complaint about Witcher 2, oddly enough, is that it might have a little too much story. Being based on books, there's a well established "universe".. but that doesn't translate as well to a game, and you end up hearing names of places, kings, sorcerers, and others that are never explained and sometimes never repeated. Characters in the game talk about some people as if everyone is meant to know them, but you the player do not and they rarely explain why you *should* know them.

It doesn't detract from the main plot, of course, but it's hard to understand the whole setting when so much just flies over your head with no explanation.

Interesting... Is there a best translation/edition? I'd be interested in reading them.

Hard to tell... Polish is my 1st language, so I never needed any Witcher book translations

Anyway, good translation will be probably very important, because books contains a lot of specific polish language humor, without good translation you will lose up to 50% of fun from reading these books... Polish language is one of the most difficult languages in the world, and Andrzej (Andrew) Sapkowski (Sapkowsky?) love using relatively difficult language constructions...

Books are awesome (much MUCH better then games), but I cannot help with with finding any good translation...

One more thing: Do not EVER watch Wither movie. Peoples who made this crap should be painfully executed.

I'm entering the end of act 1. Ya I know I taking my sweet time (to many distractions). Enjoying the game. Glad I just got my inverse mouse option back (almost got used to it too lol). It funny that I have to play on normal at first and not the hard difficult on the first playthrough. The game is awesome!

For those who have Witcher 2, how does it compare to DA: Origins? I'm going through the first Witcher and I'm finding the world and characters very wooden and 1-dimensional (at least compared to Origins). For example, I find Geralt's 'badass vibe' a little suffocating...How good is Witcher 2 from this point of view?

Witcher books are awesome, and the Czech translation is not so bad either. I also highly recommend other books from Sapkovski, notably his trilogy about the Hussite movement in Czech in 15th century called Narrentum, God's Warriors and Lux Perpetua. I like it even better than the Witcher saga, expecially the later part where it all became too muddy, over-complicated and ridden with unnecessary inter-textual references.

The second game looks good, but the launch was a horrible fiasco, even though I have a completely legal copy from Gamersgate, I can't install the 1.1 patch. Shamefurrrr dispray!

I finished it, and I agree, it's very sweet. I consider it better than Dragon Age 2 in every way possible. It doesn't have party-based combat, but it was implemented better in DA1 anyway. My only complaint about Witcher 2, oddly enough, is that it might have a little too much story. Being based on books, there's a well established "universe".. but that doesn't translate as well to a game, and you end up hearing names of places, kings, sorcerers, and others that are never explained and sometimes never repeated. Characters in the game talk about some people as if everyone is meant to know them, but you the player do not and they rarely explain why you *should* know them.

It doesn't detract from the main plot, of course, but it's hard to understand the whole setting when so much just flies over your head with no explanation.

On the other hand, you're playing a guy with amnesia. It makes sense that other people know about stuff that you should, but don't. It would be kind of silly if everybody limited their conversation topics to only stuff you've already seen in game.

My opinion of Witcher 2 is the first area was great, and after that I got bored.

And they've screwed the launch so bad on Steam with no preload and having to redownload a 9gb file post patch that I don't even know when I'll be able to play it again. Possibly not til after the LAN party we're having on June 4th...tons of stuff to DL right now.

yeah... I was very surprised to see that. It's great that everyone gets the free dlc, but downloading 9 more gigs... heh. That's a bit crazy. Not a big deal to me, but folks that have capped internet, etc.... I think they might care Also, steam pushed the 9 gigs to everyone. There wasn't a patch followed by a click here for the dlc or whatever... it was just a 9 gig push. Jebus.

Onto my question...

I have the first Witcher (directors cut). I've played about 4 hours. I'm debating... should I finish it and then move onto the witcher 2 or just scrap it for now and move on? Whatcha think?

For those who have Witcher 2, how does it compare to DA: Origins? I'm going through the first Witcher and I'm finding the world and characters very wooden and 1-dimensional (at least compared to Origins). For example, I find Geralt's 'badass vibe' a little suffocating...How good is Witcher 2 from this point of view?

It is a different game, at least in combat. Both witchers got a fast clicky combat with one character who is a fighter/mage type.

As for Witcher 1, I do not know how far you got, but it is not 1 dimensional (it might seem at first). What DAO has over Witcher 1 is companions from the start that provide constant cool conversations, while you can get those only from NPCs in Witcher. But Witcher is not black/white like DAO and DA2 (except for rare moments where they bothered to put more options like Morrigan's offer to have a child near the end of DAO).

I am hoping to get the Witcher 2 in two weeks. Any suggestions on which DL service to use, or should I get a physical D via amazon, etc?

One thing to perhaps consider, is that GOG is a sister company to CDProjekt (The Witcher makers). So by buying from GOG, the developers earn more. And GOG is just great! I can think of no reason not to support them! No DRM on any game they sell! You can download, then burn a backup copy to CD/DVD. No internet validation. No keys to input. No disks to stuff in the drive. No muss no fuss.

One thing to perhaps consider, is that GOG is a sister company to CDProjekt (The Witcher makers). So by buying from GOG, the developers earn more. And GOG is just great! I can think of no reason not to support them! No DRM on any game they sell! You can download, then burn a backup copy to CD/DVD. No internet validation. No keys to input. No disks to stuff in the drive. No muss no fuss.

They also don't have the same infrastructure as the other providers do. Patches are seperate downloads, there's no automatic (or even one-click) updates. The game download itself is split up into six or seven files that you either need to download yourself, or queue up in their downloader tool.

It's also worth mentioning that the GOG version was the only DRM-free one because CDPRojekt chose to impose SecuROM on every seller *except* the one they own, which is rather sleazy. The patch just removed the DRM from all the other versions, so now I'd say you should buy it from your preferred store.

I bought from GOG this time and it worked, but a friend of mine had corrupted files (and it wouldn't tell him which one) so he basically had to download the whole game twice. He was not amused.

I'm a big fan of The Wither series. Reading the stories from 1986 till the end. Have TW2 collector's edition and still playing the game (not every day so I can enjoy it longer:)) but I have to say the first part was better.

TW2 is a strange mix of

* resident evil linear slashing

* free city door to door roaming

* free outdoor adventuring.

The good

* graphics - excellent, great, awesome, you name it. I guess it supports all the Dx11 stuff like film DOF and maybe even tesselation. Move animation, fights, day/night/ water/ rain/ It all looks gorgeous (well, the HDR is little over the edge). I've added a screenie to the post. Yes, it looks that good.

* music - epic, but worse then the 1st part. Maybe I will like it more after decoding all the ingme music files. In 1st part there were the best piecies. Not on the soundtrack.

* fights - fast and furrious, challenging, sometimes too challenging. It's not DA kind of watch/click skill/click potion/ or DA2 watch/watch/watch. You need to mix light and srong hits and dodge always. Never stay in one place... and use the 'signs' also.

* optimization (on my machine) with HD resolution and all options maxed out (without ubersampling) I get minimal of 25 FPS but stable 40 to v-synced 60. The game never crashed on me so it's good point too.

The bad

* The "freedom" is a lie. Witcher still can't jump, only in marked places that are sometimes hard to spot. All areas are claustrophobic. Great forrest appears to be a few "corridors" with invisible walls. All of the houses have similar insides.

* The dialogs have nothing to do with the ones from books. The writers thoughts that "rich, mature story" is achieved by more cursing. This is NOT Sapkowski's school. The curses in books were "salt&pepper" for a fine dish of interesting, light, natural dialogues. In TW2 games the curses are almost all the effort of the makers (apart of 'the boobs scenes') to make a adult plot. Damn! I hate it because the whole plot altogether is not bad.

* dialog options - very little ammount of real choices. More like - tell me abutt A and then B and C. Or tell my abiut B first, then C and A last. No real impact on the story.

* interface - in most parts it's great. Skill tree and equipment but... but but but... no comparing options in crafting and shopping windows. No sorting options. No memorizing option for all kind of recipes, no 'N' sign at minimap and static quest markers on multilevel maps... that's just ugly.

* ballance - I was trying to get by one point for about 3,4 hours and was literally throwing my mouse around the room. But then with another tactic I've managed to make it in 5 minutes. Is it encouraging the not linear approach? I don't think so.

In my opinion the game is somewhere between 7-8/10 and I am fan of the character. Some things can be improved by patches but some are just bad design choices. While waiting for release I've played the first part and it's still great. Especially with the Academy Award nominee Tomasz Bagiński intro & outro movies.

It's also worth mentioning that the GOG version was the only DRM-free one because CDPRojekt chose to impose SecuROM on every seller *except* the one they own, which is rather sleazy. The patch just removed the DRM from all the other versions, so now I'd say you should buy it from your preferred store.

The lack of preload on other services was sleazy too. I barely had time to play the game before, hey, look, redownload this 9gb file! *sigh* It'll be later this week before I can even play again, cause I was downloading other things first.

I'm starting to rethink preferring Steam at this point, though this usually doesn't happen.

My biggest complaint about the game is the interface, which is mind numbingly poor. Beyond that though the storyline does grab me and pull me in, perhaps not as well as the first game but still better then many games. Witcher 1 had plenty of issues as well which I was willing to overlook for the story.

Actually after the 1.1 patch all the versions (except presumably Steam) now just update from the loader. I bought it directly from GoG and 1.2 patch just installed without having to go through GoG.

Great game, but still has one major problem leftover from the first; the game suffers from a bad case of negative difficulty scaling. Early game battles are harsh and often require you to exploit AI to survive. Once you get powered up you pretty much just roflstomp everything.

Still, best cRPG I've played a long time. I like how the game doesn't hold your hand and just throws you to the wolves like the old cRPGs used to. If nothing else Bioware and EA will have to step back and rethink Mass Effect 3 n..haha good one they won't care in the slightest because they know console owners will eat it up. Anyway, good on CD Projekts part for letting gamers know there's still companies that care about their customers. Even though I'm sure people still pirated it, I wonder how many turned around and purchased it afterwards compared to, say, Dragon Age 2.